jwz: 16-Mar-2017 (Thu)

Broke-Ass Stuart wrote a very nice article about us in the Examiner today!

San Francisco's famous weirdness isn't dead:

Hubba Hubba was started in 2006 by ringleader Jim Sweeney and has a rotating cast of performers, including Alexa Von Kickinface, Lee Presson and Maggie Motorboat. It's funny, strange, sexy and halfway insane. It's also a weekly throwback to when San Francisco was a wilder and weirder city, which is perfect considering that running concurrently downstairs in the bigger DNA venue is Death Guild, the oldest continually operating gothic-industrial dance club in the United States. Between the two, shit gets really weird at the DNA Lounge on Monday nights. It's magical. [...]

I'm only kind of serious about my newfound clown fetish, but what honestly made Monday night special was that it was proof that San Francisco's famous weirdness isn't dead. The fact that a clown burlesque show was happening in the same building as a goth-industrial party reminded me that there's still plenty of odd underground things happening -- and that we must fight to protect them.

I especially enjoyed the last bit:

As the night ended and the clown burlesque show was at a close, the all-clown New Orleans-style marching band, was going throw open the doors and march through the goth party downstairs. The rest of the clowns, as well as those of us in the crowd, would all trail behind, second-line style. Unfortunately, at the very last minute, the move was vetoed. I don't know the reasoning, but it's possible we finally found the one thing too weird even for the DNA Lounge.

I don't know the reasoning either, but, oh man, the Death Guild promoters are gonna catch a cold, sitting in all that shade.

Exciting news on the Codeword construction front: for a minute, we had an actual unobstructed sidewalk! And you could see our sign from more than five feet away! The condo construction next door took down their scaffolding months ago, but for some inexplicable reason, took forever to re-pour the sidewalk out front. They finally did, and it was a glorious thing:

But like I said, that only lasted a minute. They didn't actually bother to put the façade on the building before they took the scaffolding down, because... reasons? So they went and put it back up again. But this time there's a tunnel underneath it, so at least our side of the street is now somewhat navigable again. Somewhat.

It's an improvement, at least. The number of times we hear, "Oh, I didn't know this place even existed" has gone up. That's never really something you want to hear, but it's better than silence?

In financial news, there's not really any news. People are forever saying to me, "So, are things looking up? I came to this one show and it seemed crowded!" Everybody wants to make happy smalltalk and hear that your cancer is in remission, or at least the chemo doesn't make you vomit too much. So it is better? I don't know. Maybe a little? But not really, and not enough. My accountant and bookkeeper won't be able to tell me for sure how much we lost in February until the end of March, but I do know that even though January did a fair amount more business than December did, we still managed to lose about the same amount of money. It's so great seeing your income go up -- and then seeing your expenses go up by the same amount.

The Patreon is up to a bit over $4,000 per month in contributions, which is absolutely amazing and it's incredibly gratifying to know that so many people believe in what we're doing here, but it's still not enough. If we got like 8× that we'd be doing ok.

The Chin-Stroking Society of the Internet frequently enjoy holding court to present wisdom like, "Well you ought to just ditch Codword then! There, I've solved it for you. You're welcome." But our realtor has now shown it to basically every qualified operator in the city and they've all said no. I keep having to point out to people that you can't sell something unless you have someone willing to buy it. Meanwhile, I'm still on the hook for the lease, even if I just close the doors. The fact that nobody will bite does give us a bit more credibility when we say to our landlord, "Look, the rent is too high." Negotiations, obviously, are ongoing.

Well, I hope that didn't bum you out. Unless you being bummed out results in you becoming a Patreon sponsor. In which case I'm not sorry!

We've had some press about some recent events! SF Sonic reviewed John 5 and The Creatures; The Bay Bridged reviewed Rachel Lark (which was an awesome show!) SF Classical Voice reviewed Mercury Soul; and Spinning Platters, Rock Subculture, and 48 Hills all reviewed the Book of Love show.